REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, GAZA/JERUSALEM - Israel pounded Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Saturday for a fifth day, killing nine people including two disabled women according to medics, and showed no sign of pausing despite international pressure to negotiate a ceasefire.

Asked if Israel might move from the mostly aerial attacks of the past four days into a ground war in Gaza to stop militant rocket fire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied: "We are weighing all possibilities and preparing for all possibilities."

"No international pressure will prevent us from acting with all power," he told reporters in Tel Aviv on Friday, a day after a phone call with US President Barack Obama about the worst flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian violence in almost two years.

Washington affirmed Israel's right to defend itself in a statement from the Pentagon on Friday. But Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon he was concerned "about the risk of further escalation and emphasized the need for all sides to do everything they can to protect civilian lives and restore calm", a Pentagon statement said. 

Two disabled women were killed and four others wounded and in serious condition when an Israeli tank shell struck a rehabilitation center in the eastern part of Gaza City, Palestinian medics said. An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was checking for details on why the center was targeted.

Three militants and four other people including a 65-year-old man were killed by air strikes early on Saturday, doctors in the densely populated sliver of coastal territory said. 

Residents said a mosque in the central Gaza Strip was bombed to rubble. The military said it had housed a weapons cache. Graffiti scrawled on one of the mosque's blasted walls read,

"We will prevail despite your arrogance, Netanyahu."

In Israel, a Palestinian rocket seriously wounded one person and injured another seven when it hit a fuel tanker at a service station in Ashdod, 30 km (20 miles) north of Gaza. Islamist militants in Gaza warned they would launch rockets at Tel Aviv's main international airport and warned airlines to stay clear.

Gaza medical officials said at least 76 civilians, including 24 children, were among 115 people killed so far in the aerial bombardments on the narrow 40-km-(25-mile)-long, sandy strip into which nearly 2 million people are packed.

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